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Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

> (Condé Nast also owns Ars, by the way.)

What purpose do you think the mobilization of your contempt at this time serves?

It's a journalistic disclosure. Ars' parent company has a relationship with the subject of the article, and the author disclosed that relationship.

They think audiences don't overlap.

Also Ars is just joining in on a well-established pile-on at this point that will do minimal additional reputational damage.

If it was publishing a bombshell expose, on the other hand, you can bet Conde Nast would shut it down.

Probably attempting to prove ARS journalism isnt slanted nor impaired on account of their new ownership

They were recently acquired by new management as a result of peter thiel and hulk hogan successfully suing and shutting down gawker, their prior owners. Any time a news sit changes ownership theres likely some skepticism in the air over if journalistic integrity is preserved or not especially when it creates conflict of interest with an owner.

Wait... what? When was Ars Technica owned by Gawker? I thought it was Conde Nast for a long time.

If true, though, wow, it definitely never affected them before.

Sounded odd to me, too, so I checked. Conde Nast since 2008, privately owned until then, per Wikipedia.

I think it's optimistic to suggest that Ars Technica, a site with no qualms publishing e.g. a great big steaming pile of baseless AI scaremongering under a banner photo of a movie Terminator, is concerned that being under the same umbrella as a snake oil peddler might damage its brand.

What other purpose might the mobilization of your contempt at this time serve?

They probably know already most of their readers are in the science camp, so it's just catering to their base. Plus, as the other poster pointed out, it's a way to show independence from their owners. (Conde Nast likely just happy they're able to profit from both sides)

I think ars technica writes bad articles, but on a very wide range of subjects. Very few of the writers seem to be have specialized insight into a particular area rather than a general engineer / nerd bent. For me as a game developer, I find their game reviews to be the worst. Every now and again they will have one and they are always massively unbalanced. Just a regular guys unfiltered opinion, may as well go on any random message board and get hundreds of equally or more valid 'reviews'. They'll often pan a good game because they thought it was hard, you can hear their 'frustrated cus bad at vidya games' coming through in the article. I think its obvious that one of the writers was playing the game anyway and decided 'hey I can milk an article out of this' .

"When was Ars Technica owned by Gawker?"

Never. Parent is mistaking them for Gizmodo, or is just wrong.

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